Tales from the road: The little Irish chaplain 'worth ten men'

John McNamara (upper right) served as 1st Wisconsin chaplain.

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In Lake Geneva, they say Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, “Little Phil” Sheridan and Mary Todd Lincoln once visited their quaint Wisconsin burg. But I’m more interested in Civil War commoners, so I make my way to the town’s Pioneer Cemetery — it’s two blocks from the lake and across Maxwell Street from a vintage Rolls Royce parked next to a shiny, red Corvette in a driveway.

Nothing else calms jumpy nerves quite like a walk through a well-manicured graveyard, even one with grass coated thickly with dew, as Pioneer Cemetery is this morning. Here, in the town’s oldest cemetery, more than two dozen Civil War veterans rest.

You’ll find Ora Kimball, a “useful and upright citizen” who served in the 9th Vermont. He died in 1882. I wonder if he was among the United States soldiers Stonewall Jackson bagged in Harpers Ferry in mid-September 1862.

The broken tombstone of
Private Martin Ross of
the 22nd Wisconsin.

Nearby, under a low-hanging limb of a craggy oak, stands the pearl-white gravestone for William Stoodley of the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry. As an early 50ish private, he fought in battles at Newtonia, Byram’s Ford, Little Blue River and other unheralded fights in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. 

Thirty yards or so from Stoodley, embedded in soggy turf, sits the broken tombstone for Martin Ross. In 1863, the 22nd Wisconsin private died in a regimental hospital in Danville, Kentucky.

And then there’s the grave of John McNamara, the diminutive, Irish-born Episcopalian minister who served as a chaplain with the 1st Wisconsin. Newspapers hailed him during the war as the “fighting chaplain” and “little chaplain.” Oh my, what a legacy he left. 

“Faithful and earnest,” a Wisconsin newspaper called McNamara.

“Worthy and respected,” wrote another.

By the end of 1862, McNamara — who, at 36, left a thriving ministry for the U.S. Army in October 1861 — had already endured major battles at Perryville in Kentucky and Stones River in Tennessee. Then, in September 1863, he witnessed the horrors of Chickamauga.

To soldiers, McNamara provided advice, comfort, and in 1862, mittens from home. The Irishman buried some of his soldier flock, too, including Lt. Collins C. McVean, the victim of an enemy “missile” in Georgia in the summer of ‘64.

“There are few regiments in the field that are blessed with so stirring and active a Chaplain,” a Wisconsin newspaper wrote. “We have heard wounded soldiers of the 1st say that on the field of battle, their Chaplain was worth ten men. Cool and collected when the bullets and balls fly thickest, not a soldier falls but receives his immediate and personal attention.”

In 1864, in appreciation for his service, the 1st Wisconsin gave McNamara an inscribed, silver meerschaum pipe with a mouthpiece made of amber. The Irishman, meanwhile, found time to give the army hell.

Before the war, McNamara — an ardent abolitionist — railed against the evils of slavery. In the 1850s, he lived in Missouri and Kansas Territory. Later, he published a book, Three Years on the Kansas Border, in which he wrote about the struggles of pioneers to bring that territory into the union as a free state. In 1856, his anti-slavery speech in New York drew praise from the New York Herald, but his courageous stand earned him scorn by some within his church.

The gravestone of Chaplain John McNamara caught my eye in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

In Tennessee in 1862, Chaplain McNamara complained about army rules allowing “negro catchers” into camps to search for escaped slaves.

"The chief business of our officers at this post is to issue passes to slave hunters, in obedience to higher authority,” he fumed in a letter. “The new article of war forbidding officers to aid in returning fugitives is carried out thus far that we need not show the claimants where they are, nor take hold of them and help to get them away. But, on the other hand, passes are given to search our camps, and if the negroes are found in them, a word of sympathy must not be expressed by us, nor a finger lifted to save! I will be candid and say that without our direct aid it is a matter to catch a man fleeing for his life.

“But this is because the men want freedom, and will run in hopes of securing it. Now, sir, we the officers and privates of this regiment, do not like this work. We came here to fight the common enemies of our country, and we want to do it. Field officers have ridden twenty-four hours in a drenching rain, in the night, too, to protest against their regiment being used in this way. Negro catchers say that Starkweather's brigade do not cheerfully obey orders. This unwillingness on our part to do the dirtiest of all work, is regarded by the negro claimants as ‘bad usage’ and in consequence reprimands have come down to us!"

After the war, McNamara served as president of a college in Nebraska, traveled to Europe and toiled in a home for the aged in New York. In October 1885, following a trip to the post office in North Platte, Nebraska, where he ministered, McNamara was stricken by paralysis. He died hours later, age 60.

“A good man closed his earthly work loved and is mourned by our whole people,” a Nebraska newspaper wrote.

In Wisconsin, a newspaper obituary noted McNamara's “energetic spirit.”

“[H]e has acquitted himself with entire fidelity and much zeal and ability," the publication wrote, "and it may truly be said of Dr. John McNamara: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou in the joys of thy Lord.’"

---

SOURCES

• E.B. Quiner Scrapbooks: "Correspondence of the Wisconsin Volunteers, 1861-1865," Volume 2, page 160, Wisconsin Historical Society Collection
• Lincoln County (Neb.) Tribune, Oct 31, 1885 
• The Lake Geneva (Wis.) Herald, June 30, 1882
• The Telegraph-Courier, Kenosha, Wis., Apr 9, 1863, Nov. 26, 1863, July 7, 1864 
• Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wis, Jan 20, 1864

Tales from the road: A purr-fect stop in Gettysburg

Rebecca Brown and Joanie, an eight-year-old pit bull mix, at the George Meade HQ diorama.

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Sometimes dreams do come true.

Instead of returning to home base for a cat nap, I stroll into the strangest place in all of Gettysburg. (And, no, it’s not the Lincoln Links miniature golf course on Steinwehr Avenue.)

At the entrance The Civil War Tails at the Homestead Diorama Museum on Baltimore Street, a smiling Rebecca Brown greets me. She, along with her twin sister, Ruth, created dioramas of famous Gettysburg battle scenes with thousands of miniature cats.

In all, Rebecca says they have 9,000 tiny soldier felines on display. But she and Ruth have created a shade over 10,000 total according to the sisters’ “cat census.” ( I didn’t have the heart to ask who counted all the faux critters, an egregious example of journalistic malpractice.)

“My God,” I say to myself soon after forking over my seven bucks to enter this wonder of history, “there’s a diorama of Pickett’s Charge!” 

And Devil’s Den… and the fighting at East Cavalry Field… and General Meade’s HQ… and Little Round Top, complete with a “Joshua Chamberlain” brandishing a sword.

“Look,” Rebecca says, “here’s Wade Hampton.”

"Joshua Chamberlain" (bottom middle) brandishes a sword in the Little Round Top diorama.

Union cats maneuver a cannon in the Devil's Den diorama.

Charge! A diorama of the fighting at East Cavalry Field.

“Our handmade miniature soldiers give you 3-D snap-shots of the American Civil War,” the museum web site says. “Get a bird’s-eye view of a battle or get down to eye-level and see what a soldier would have seen: soldiers, horses, cannons and places.”

Like a cat on a hot tin roof (sorry), I bound from room to room examining dioramas, which also include Fort Sumter, the Monitor and Merrimac duel and Andersonville. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s bemused mother Linda and bored 8-year-old pit bull mix named Joanie take in the weird scene.

For decades, the cat-loving sisters — like, no kidding — have been creating mini felines. Mom and Dad aid the effort on the dioramas.

“Anything made of wood is Dad,” Rebecca tells me. “Anything made of fabric is Mom.”

Before departing, I marvel at “Robert E. Lee” and “Ulysses Grant” sitting at their teensy-tiny desks. Then I briefly mull the purchase of a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle of Michigan cavalry cats on the attack — it’s called “Come On, You Wolverines!” and probably the perfect gift for Mrs. B back in Nashville. (Someone purr-suade me that’s a bad idea.)

I probably need to come in from the Civil War wild.

The diorama of Pickett's Charge from above.

Tales from the road: Bullets, bottles and Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Parker's gravestone in Dallas' Crown Hill Memorial Park.

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Near Dallas’ Love Field, where JFK’s body began a heart-wrenching journey back to D.C in November of ‘63, I hang a right into Crown Hill Memorial Park, across the way from a 7-Eleven and a Fiesta Mart.

“Where’s Section 4?” I ask a man walking in the cemetery with a young girl.

Killers Bonnie and Clyde

On this overcast Saturday morning, the goal is to commune with the spirits of two of the more notorious criminals in American history — one of whom rests somewhere in this vast sea of green, gray and white. The man has no idea about Section 4, but his eyes brighten after he receives more intel. 

“I’m looking for the grave of Bonnie Parker.”

”Oh, she’s right over this way,” says the man, a visitor from Boston in Dallas with his teen daughter.

Roughly 30 yards from the gray-granite grave of Ray Bobo sits the marker for Parker, who, along with her paramour and partner in crime, Clyde Barrow, left a trail of death and destruction in the Southwest and elsewhere before lawmen sent them to their maker with volleys of lead on a lonely stretch of Louisiana road on May 23, 1934.

”I’ll leave you here to mourn,” the man says.

”Oh, I’m not here to mourn,” I tell him while staring at Parker’s flower-adorned grave. “This woman was a notorious criminal.”

Judging from those flowers and tokens of remembrance on her tombstone, Parker seems more celebrated than vilified. Atop her slab, a step from her mother’s grave, sit nine .44-caliber bullets and a bright orange Wing & Clay 12-gauge shotgun shell. Nearby rest a travel bottle of Maker’s Mark and other liquor containers, a Bud Light can, a half-smoked cigarette and a top for L’Oreal eye shadow — perhaps used by Parker to keep herself beautiful in hell.

“As The Flowers Are All Made Sweeter By The Sunshine And The Dew, So This Old World Is Made Brighter By The Lives Of Folks Like You,” reads the inscription on Parker’s gravestone — an affront to the roughly dozen folks Bonnie and Clyde are believed to have murdered in cold blood.

Bullets atop the grave marker for Bonnie Parker.

Minutes later, I find myself in the thick of notorious Dallas traffic, a Blue Bell banana fudge ice cream commercial blaring on the radio of our SUV rental. With Clyde’s South Dallas grave outside my comfort zone, I instead make a beeline for the A.H. Belo mansion in downtown Dallas, not far from where Jack Ruby gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the police department HQ. A funeral home in the 1930s, the mansion is where thousands viewed Barrow’s bullet-riddled corpse days after his demise.

While pulling into the mansion’s narrow driveway, I spy a few feet above my ride a small drone, deployed by a wedding photographer. How surreal. Minutes later, I maneuver from an illegal parking spot and meet the actual early 30ish groom who will exchange vows inside the mansion on this very day. Amazingly cheery (he’ll learn 😳), Mr. Groom talks about marriage.

“Ever hear of Bonnie and Clyde?” his one-track mind inquistor asks.

“Sure,” he replies with a wry smile.

“Well, his bullet-riddled corpse was viewed here in this mansion in 1934 by 20,000 people,” I say almost breathlessly.

“Well, we won’t have that many today,” he tells me.

It’s probably time for me to return to normal society.

Thousands viewed Clyde Barrow's bullet-riddled body at the A.H. Belo mansion in 1934.

Tales from the road: Underwear, battlefields and Horse Cave

House in Munfordville built by Union General Thomas Wood's father in 1834.

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Eager for adventure, I head north from Nashville, zooming at 80 mph by the Fruit of the Loom underwear world HQ and National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, before arriving in central Kentucky's cave and Lincoln country. My objective is Munfordville, one of those 10,000 places where the armies clashed and boyhood home of United States Army General Thomas J. Wood. On a rise behind the county courthouse, a musket shot from the Civil War mural just off Main featuring Wood's mustachioed mug, stands the house his papa built in the 1830s.

Thomas Wood appears on a
Civil War-themed mural
in Munfordville, Kentucky.

As a child in Hart County, it is said, Wood sought adventure underground with his friend, delightfully named Simon Bolivar Buckner, the future West Point grad, Mexican War vet, Rebel general and Kentucky governor. It’s a footnote that ignites a fire in some of us, until we realize, as Sherman supposedly said of war, “I am tired and sick of [it]. Its glory is all moonshine.”

Near downtown Munfordville, the railroad track and an 1,800-foot iron bridge over the meandering Green River, a 26-year-old Scotsman and Confederate colonel from Mississippi named Robert Alexander Smith fell — one of dozens of dead from the Battle of Munfordville, fought September 14-17, 1862. To honor Smith's memory, his brother commissioned a limestone battlefield monument — it stands on private property, behind a wrought-iron fence, among flags, inscribed markers and shadows. Visit it if you dare.

After exploring the Munfordville and nearby Rowlett Station battlefields, I steer south to Horse Cave (pop. of 2,300), home to Just In Gypsy Antiques and 5 Broke Girls, a favorite spot for country grub. At the corner of Main and Cave, across the street from a man sleeping in his beat-up black Chevy pickup near the “Welcome to Horse Cave” mural, I spy the entrances to Hidden River Cave and American Cave Museum. With time to spare before returning to the loving arms of Mrs. B, I venture inside. Rumor has it that the cave has a Civil War connection after all.

Hidden River Cave in
Horse Cave, Kentucky.

Inside the cave command center stand a few 20- and 30-somethings. Guides and staffers, as it turns out. They somehow endure a volley of questions from me.

“Didn't they hide horses in this cave during the Civil War?”

"No, not much happened here during the Civil War,” replies a long-haired, red-headed dude, instantly destroying a soul. Minutes later, he directs me to the cave entrance. At the bottom of a long staircase, a gratis view awaits.

By the yawning gap, I ponder whether Wood, Buckner or any other Civil War soldier had inscribed his name inside and consider taking a stroll across the “world's longest swinging cave bridge.” Instead, I retrace my steps, sending my FitBit heart rate into overdrive.

Upon returning to the CCC, I meet Al, a mandolin player in a bluegrass band. He’s a local who once lived in obscure places in west Tennessee. Al is a cave employee, too.

“What do people do in Horse Cave?”

"Not much besides caving,” he tells me. To catch a movie, locals visit “E-town” — Elizabethtown — roughly 40 miles away.

Then Al notices my T-shirt for Lambert's Cafe, the “throwed rolls” restaurant near Wilson's Creek battlefield in Missouri. In 15 minutes, we bond over memories of heaps of food at Lambert’s, bluegrass star Bill Monroe and Abe Lincoln, born over in Larue County, several hundred thousand roll tosses distant. Before my departure, Al waves me over to the front counter and signs off on a tour ticket for two, a $50 value. I’d use it today, but alas, those loving arms await.

Let’s keep history alive. 👊

My new pal Al, a Hidden River Cave guide and mandolin player in a bluegrass band.

Tales from the road: A soldier's death near Cotton Grove Road

The Battle of Salem Cemetery resulted in few casualties.

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To get to the Salem Cemetery battlefield near Jackson, Tennessee, I hang a left on Cotton Grove Road to an area first settled in 1819. This swath of rolling land probably doesn’t look much different than it did in 1821, the year they began planting cotton seeds here in the loamy soil. Then I go past the Fraternal Order Police gun range and a Woodmen Of The World memorial for a man named E.E. Brooks before parking in a small gravel lot near a state historical marker.

Adam Huntsman's grave
in Old Salem Cemetery.

“No metal detectors,” reads a sign steps from a cannon and a covered wayside exhibit. 

Among those who rest in remote Old Salem Cemetery, the second-oldest cemetery in Madison County, are Susan H. Person, who, according to her broken tombstone, “departed this life Oct. 27, 1842,” and a colorful, one-legged pol/lawyer named Adam Huntsman, who sent Davy Crockett packing for Texas after defeating him in a congressional election in 1835.

After stepping from my SUV, I wonder: “How’d this battlefield almost become an industrial solar farm?”

Gloomy-gray skies threaten rain, but they’re mostly bluffing. So, too, was Nathan Bedford Forrest on Dec. 19, 1862, when “The Wizard of the Saddle” sent soldiers barreling into Midwesterners in and near the cemetery. The frigid, unforgiving night before the fighting and killing, Union soldiers spied campfires of Forrest’s soldiers off in the distance — a large, brown and white historical sign marks that area — so their commander forbade fires.

“Mortified,” 43rd Colonel Adolph Engelmann, a Bavarian-born Mexican War veteran, wrote later about his order.

The Confederate cavalry’s attack, a feint by Forrest because he had more important business elsewhere, came at daybreak the next morning.

“With loud cheers they charged upon my center,” Engelmann wrote. “As they approached they were received by a well-directed fire, some of the foremost horses falling and obstructing the road, those immediately behind came to a halt, while half a dozen riderless horses rushed madly through our lines.”

The broken grave of Susan H. Person in Old Salem Cemetery.

After the four-hour fight, Engelmann’s outnumbered soldiers retreated toward Jackson. The Battle of Salem Cemetery, of course, was no Antietam, Gettysburg or Cold Harbor. Casualties numbered perhaps 20 killed, wounded or missing on the Rebels’ side. The U.S. Army, meanwhile, suffered six wounded and two killed. But mommas and poppas — from Tennessee and Mississippi to Illinois and elsewhere — mourned just the same.

11th Illinois Cavalry private Adam Kehl of Company A, a blacksmith before the war, was among those killed that wintry day. He was the unmarried son of Rosina and Sebastian Kehl, who hailed from Hesse, Germany and settled in Peoria. Adam paid for his parents’ passage from the Old Country. A bullet to the chest sent him to his grave before they arrived in America.

“They came to the United States with the expectation of receiving assistance from their … son,” a friend of the family noted.

I don’t know where Private Kehl rests today. Perhaps he has a marker in the national cemetery in Nashville — the U.S. government recovered thousands of remains of Union soldiers following the war. Or perhaps his bones lie in an unmarked grave in a field or woods near Cotton Grove Road.

A grave for an unknown Confederate soldier in Old Salem Cemetery.

---

SOURCES

— Adam Kehl mother’s pension file, National Archives via fold3.com (WC140043)
— Official Records, Volume X Chapter 32, Pages 555-556

Tales from the road: I scored Lincoln bust, battlefield horsehoe

Glenn (left), a distant relative of Robert E. Lee, and Charles, the propietor of an
 antiques store in Eagleville, Tennessee.

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At 8:35 on a sun-kissed Saturday morning, I plop my heinie into the shotgun seat of battlefield tramping pal Jack's fancy SUV for our ride into the Civil War wilds of Middle Tennessee. We're rambling southeast to Shelbyville and points unknown.

Pal Jack holds my Lincoln bust.

At our first stop, an Eagleville antiques store that once served as a combo bank/dental office, we meet a retired railroad worker named Glenn, a distant relative of “Marble Man” Robert E. Lee, and the proprietor named Charles, a former Bible salesman and a friend of country star Marty Stuart who charms me into forking over 40 bucks for a circa-1940s typewriter and another 40 smackers for a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that is sure to cause a rupture in my solid-gold, 32-year marriage to Mrs. B. (Apologies to all English teachers for the length of the preceding sentence.)

While I suffer from buyer's remorse on our way to Shelbyville — site of a major cavalry battle on June 27, 1863 — we pass the delightfully named Morning Glory Catfish restaurant and a creamery where they serve midnight chocolate ice cream that’ll put a smile on your mug. Then, as we enter unincorporated Rover (population 357 hearty souls), master of historical trivia Jack poses a question. 

“Do you know the name of President Lincoln's dog?”

“I have no idea.”

“Fido.” (Amazingly spot-on!)

Fired bullet unearthed at Liberty Gap.

In Shelbyville — described by Union soldiers as “Little Boston” for its Unionist leanings — we don’t find the cavalry battle site. But we admire a Ms. PacMan video game ($2,200) in a collectibles shop and the dazzling inventory next door in the baseball card/sports store. (My gosh, they even have a Stan Musial glove in its original box.)

Back on the Civil War trails, we stop along the Liberty Pike, a few miles from magical Bell Buckle, where we meet my new pals Chuck and Perry next to their green pickup. 

With permission, they hunt for battle relics on farms at Liberty Gap, where the armies clashed in an unheralded Tullahoma Campaign battle from June 24-26, 1863. It's hallowed ground, unmarked and largely forgotten — one of those 10,000 places deep-voiced historian David McCullough told us about on Ken Burns' epic “Civil War” doc decades ago.

Under a cloudless, deep-blue sky, Perry and Chuck have had a good day. They show off their finds: bullets, a horseshoe and other detritus of war. 

Later, these good-hearted souls hand some of their haul to Jack and me. The horseshoe is destined for a place of honor in my office shelf; the bullets — one dropped and two fired — will go to our young friend Taylor, whose great-great-great-grandfather fought at Liberty Gap.

“Maybe his grandpappy fired one of 'em,” Perry tells us.

Battlefield horseshoe

Soon, we head deeper into the Civil War wilds. 

In Chapel Hill, we briefly visit the site of the birth of Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” himself. Then we venture on narrow, snaky back roads — passed a drooping “God, Guns And Trump” sign, empty fields and rickety barns — before arriving at the boyhood home of “The Wizard.” A locked gate prevents our entry to the site, but does it really matter?

If we set aside the near-removal of my fingertips on Jack’s car window (long story), we’ve made excellent memories overall. At a small, off-the-beaten path farm cemetery, a final stop, daffodils poke through the sod and an American flag flaps in a gentle breeze. In the back of my ride rests a rusty typewriter and Honest Abe, comfortably under wraps. At my feet sits an old horseshoe. It’s all plenty good enough.

Monument denoting birthplace of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Chapel Hill, Tennessee.

Tales from the road: 'Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield'?

Perry Sanders stands where he unearthed a cannon ball on the Liberty Gap battlefield.

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At 10:15 Sunday morning, I streak down Liberty Pike, a couple miles from Bell Buckle, Tennessee — home of an annual MoonPie Festival and the Bell Buckle Cafe, one of the best restaurants in America for country cooking and stellar conversation. Then I spy two gents standing by a farm gate and an ancient, green pickup, metal detectors dangling from their hands.

“Is this the Liberty Gap battlefield?” I ask the pair after rolling down my window. I know the answer to my own question, of course, having explored this area roughly a half-dozen times. My question is simply an icebreaker.

New pal Perry Sanders and I at Liberty Gap.

After small talk, I introduce myself to Perry, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Shelbyville, and Chuck, a 60ish dude and Perry’s longtime pal. Based on my extensive gabbing with relic hunters over the years, I expect an earful about their latest finds and the unmarked Liberty Gap battlefield. Neither disappoints.

“See that field over there?” says Perry, pointing to an expanse as flat as the backside of a skillet. “500 bullets found over there.” From June 24-26, 1863, out here in the wilds an hour’s drive southeast of Nashville — “God’s country,” Chuck calls it — the armies clashed in a Tullahoma Campaign battle that gets stiff-armed in the history books. Few casualties resulted — perhaps no more than 75 Confederate dead and 60 prisoners. The Union Army suffered fewer casualties.

“The affair at Liberty Gap will always be considered a skirmish,” Union Brigadier General Richard Johnson wrote, “but few skirmishes ever equaled it in severity.”

With a farmer’s permission, Perry and Chuck have hunted this portion of the Liberty Gap battlefield many times.

“I found a cannon ball over there near that fence post,” Perry tells me. He gestures toward the near distance and then proudly shows me a photo of the hefty find on his phone.

Liberty Gap battlefield from the air

Beyond a herd of cows in the far distance, a steep, heavily wooded hillside looms below a deep-blue sky.

“Best view of the valley from up there,” Chuck says.

I secretly hope that’s where 49th Ohio Sergeant Jonathan Rapp — a great great great grandfather of a young friend of mine — wrote this wonderful entry in his diary after fighting at the Gap:

Bullets -- one fired, one dropped -- unearthed
 at Liberty Gap.

“In the valleys of Liberty Gap, the great mountains all covered with green trees. They lift their proud head so near to the sky. The rich valleys just ready for harvest; the wheat which is in abundance just ready to reap; the cornfields so green and so fine, just ready to shoot forth into blossom, but now are all trodden down by the soldiers of liberty.”

While Chuck waves his magic wand over hallowed ground, I swap Civil War stories with Perry, an unforgettable character.

“Where’d you get that earring?” I ask, gesturing to a small silver loop in his left ear.

“Had that since 1966,” he says.

Then Perry recounts a dizzying array of relic hunting finds and a long-ago encounter with one of the finest people our country has produced. “I met Coretta Scott King,” he says of the wife of Martin Luther King, the slain civil rights leader. “I gave her a hug. It was like meeting Jesus.”

Before going our separate ways, Perry and I also embrace. Until next time, my new friend.

Tales from the road: His love for history knows no bounds

Glen Echo on the Battle Ground Academy campus.

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My history-minded pal Jack reminds (loosely) of Mikey from the old Life commercial. Showing the same enthusiasm as that little kid lapping up that cereal, he embraces almost any Civil War excursion, no matter how out of the way or bizarre.

Jack and I recently visited the Snow Hill
battlefield 45 miles east of Nashville.

On a recent weekend, we reveled in a trip to the obscure and unheralded Snow Hill battlefield in the wilds of Middle Tennessee. Several years ago, we two history nerds looked at each other, gobsmacked, while examining documents from the 1859 John Brown trial in archives in Charles Town, West Virginia. And, of course, the piece de resistance of our Civil War adventures was that time he put me under a hypnotic spell at dawn at Fort Granger in Franklin, Tennessee.

“Don’t come back clucking like a chicken,” Mrs. B told me that morning at 5 from under the comfy confines of warm blankets. Mrs. B, of course, desperately hopes some of Jack rubs off on me. He’s a neat freak like my dad, “Big Johnny.” (R.I.P.) I lean toward slovenly behavior. The technical word for this condition is “slob.”

Glen Echo historical marker

Anywho, on Saturday morning, following a hearty breakfast — Jack didn’t pay this time, so it didn’t taste as good as one when he does — we went on a whirlwind, 4 1/2-hour history tour. All of this immersion came within 10 or so square miles north of Franklin.

After examining some rando historical markers, we explored an antebellum mansion called Glen Echo in the middle of the Battle Ground Academy campus. “Look here,” Jack says, thrusting a finger toward a historical marker in front of the impressive, two-story brick structure.

“In 1862, General Don Carlos Buell’s Federal Army could be seen from the back porch as it marched to Shiloh,” reads the sixth sentence. For us, this was a moment worthy of a half-dozen goosebumps.

Prehistoric Native American mound in Primm Park in Brentwood, Tennessee.

Then we visited the 1864 Hollow Tree Gap battlefield — a “battlefield of the mind” smack-dab among apartment complexes, retail and other suburban schlock. Next, we explored log slave cabins on the old Primm farm, a circa-1832 schoolhouse, a prehistoric Native American mound and two brick slave cabins on the Ravenswood plantation.

Restored slave cabins on old Primm Farm.

During these history excursions, Jack often dispenses, scattershooting style, historical facts and figures, a small percentage of which are actually useful. When he does, I typically look at him as you may look at someone while listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” under the influence of THC gummies.

“Did you know that if the Spanish Armada hadn’t happened the world would be so different?” he blurted (I think).

Of course, we completed this sojourn with visits to a farmer’s market, where I briefly considered the purchase of (funny) mushroom-infused coffee; an Amish store, where the owner showed us a “slave wall” bordering a creek; ANOTHER battlefield (Knob Gap); and a tony residential neighborhood where the Union Army constructed massive earthworks.

Oh, we also stopped at ANOTHER rando historical marker, this one for “Wheeler’s Raid Around Rosecrans.”

Thank you, Mikey… err … Jack for your enthusiasm for history. Let’s keep it alive.

Tales from the road: Sights, smells on Hood's retreat route

My journey started in Lynnville, Tennessee, the town that suffered a "partial burning" by
the Union Army, according to this historical sign.

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After mentally checking out of the 21st century, I park in quaint Lynnville, Tennessee (population 313) for stops at the fancy leather goods place for sniffs of the wallets and at Soda Pop Junction (home of “Big Johnny” burgers) for a delicious fried apple pie.

Great fried pies are sold here in Lynnville.

I’m flying solo on this frigid Saturday morning for visits to obscure and largely forgotten battlefields on John Bell Hood’s retreat route in the aftermath of his Army of Tennessee’s crushing defeat at Nashville on Dec. 15-16, 1864. Were if not for, like, 5,000 football games scheduled, sports fanatic Mrs. B might be with me. But as she mutters this morning at 3:23, “I don’t do well in the cold.”

My first stop after departing Lynnville — which suffered a “partial burning” by the United States Army during the war, per a historical marker in town — is the Richland Creek battlefield. Here, on Christmas Eve 1864, the outnumbered and ragtag rearguard of Hood’s army fought against United States cavalry. As I have a half-dozen times, I park near the modern bridge over Richland Creek and try to imagine the fighting.

Somewhere out here, perhaps on Milky Way Farm across the Pulaski Pike, Nathan Bedford Forrest — Rebel cavalry genius, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” and postwar Klansman — directed troops. And somewhere out here, an obsessed Union cavalryman named Harrison Collins captured the object of his longtime desire — a Rebel flag — by stooping down and picking it up. For his bravery, he earned a Medal of Honor.

Unheralded Richland Creek battlefield.

Naturally, I need to know much more about the battlefield, so I drive on a side road and across the railroad track for a stop at a gift shop. I figure someone inside might direct me to a local who can give me a tour of the unmarked hallowed ground.

“Your shop sure smells good,” I tell the three delightful women behind the counter. No battlefield tour results, but I enjoy a brief staredown with a strange-looking cat who smiles at me from covers of a half-dozen Dr. Seuss books on the gift shop shelves.

On my return to the pike, I flag down a local in a pickup truck, but the conversation goes like one you might have underwater with a friend. All the time I am thinking to myself: “DON’T YOU KNOW HARRISON COLLINS EARNED A MEDAL OF HONOR OUT HERE!”

Sigh. The life of a Civil War obsessive.

After that respectful convo, I travel south past Pulaski, where ex-Rebel soldiers founded the evil Klan on Christmas Eve 1865, and toward the Alabama border (gulp) for a visit to the Anthony’s Hill battlefield, where “The Wizard” fought off U.S. cavalry on Christmas Day 1864.

Before the battlefield stop, I visit a place my dad (“Big Johnny”) and momma (“Sweet Peggy”) — RIP to both ❤️❤️ — would have loved: a combo antiques store/AJ’s One Stop Deer Processing. An antler cap cut here will set you back 10 bucks, extra sausage is a cool 30 large.

Mom and Dad would have appreciated this place.

Inside I enjoy the smell of deer carcasses — pssst! it’s not like those wallets in Lynnville — and admire a multitude of deer heads hanging from the wall and a 1964 “Sport” magazine with Sandy Koufax, a hero of mine, on the cover.

Confederate dead from 
Battle of Anthony's Hill.

Near core Anthony’s Hill battlefield, owned by a descendant of slaves, I briefly stop at a small cemetery. Leaves and twigs crackle and groan beneath my feet. A hundred yards or so from the trace of a wartime road on this unheralded battleground rest a few dozen Confederate soldiers, some killed on Christmas Day 1864. My God.

In a flash, I’m zipping south on the pike, destination Sugar Creek — the final battle of the Nashville Campaign. I hope to put my drone in the air for a view of the battlefield, where only a few dozen fell on Dec. 26, 1864. But remember: Somewhere a momma and poppa mourned their deaths just the same.

Unfortunately, I don’t find a launch point, but I do find a general store (closed), where according to a source, Sugar Creek battlefield relics sit. Nearby, behind a barbed wire fence, a brown and white horse walks my way.

“What does he know about the Battle of Sugar Creek?” I wonder. But alas, I must go. Sadly, a return to the 21st century awaits.

Tales from the road: Jimmy Gentry and the horrors of Dachau

Jimmy Gentry statue near a church in Franklin, Tennessee.

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There’s no better way to explore a battlefield — or a town, for that matter — than by walking. And so on Sunday morning, after yet another visit to the Franklin (Tenn.) battlefield, I strolled into town, destination unknown.

Smiling Jimmy Gentry
caught my eye.

At the excellent Triple Crown Bakery, I bought a bunch of goodies that put a smile on my mug. Nearby, I added a jar of local honey. And while returning to “Murray” — Mrs. B’s nickname for her mighty Murano — I happened upon a bronze statue of man sitting on a bench outside a church. The smile on the work of art lights up this little corner of bustling Franklin.

Steps away, I examined a historical marker.

“This statue is in the likeness of Franklin, Tn native and U.S. Army veteran Jimmy Gentry as he reflects on the rock wall and the memories of waiting there for the bus that would take him and many others off to war to fight for our country,” it reads. “These empty seats are in honor of all the heroes who fought for our nation, many of whom never returned.”

I vaguely remember a friend talking about Jimmy, who died in 2022, age 97. So I did some digging. My God, what a life this World War II veteran led. In 1945, he helped liberate Dachau, the German concentration camp near Munich.

True story: In 1992, while on our honeymoon in Germany, Mrs. B and I stopped in Munich. After a night of beer drinking and frivolity in a pub, we asked a white-haired gentleman traveling alone on the bus with our large group if he wanted to visit Dachau with us the next day.

“No,” Bill told us, “I was there in 1945.”

He had helped liberate Dachau, too. The experience haunted him.

A historical marker near the Gentry statue.

In an interview with Nashville PBS several years ago, Jimmy Gentry told of his mind-numbing experience at that place of evil.

“Off in the distance I saw boxcars lined up with hundreds of dead bodies inside. They looked starved and tortured,” said Gentry, who survived the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. “I asked another soldier, ‘Who are these people?’ He said, ‘They are Jews.'"

“No one told us what we would find. No one explained what our mission was. We saw a wall and that was the entrance to a prison camp like I have never seen.” “I can't understand it,” Gentry added. “Not then, not now."

What an experience. What a walk. We thank you for your service, Jimmy. And you, too, Bill, wherever you may be.

Tales from the road: 'Disappearing' into Dill Branch Ravine

Dill Branch Ravine (right) on the Shiloh (Tenn.) battlefield

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Minutes after leaving Tom Petty and Bob Dylan behind, I stiff-arm the 21st century and disappear into the woods above Dill Branch Ravine on the Shiloh (Tenn.) battlefield.

“Watch for snakes,” a ranger had warned me earlier.

A stark reminder of the cost of war.

But on this glorious morning, I spy no snakes. No humans either. I’m apparently the only living soul traipsing toward the ravine, where on the evening of April 6, 1862, Confederates mounted a desperate (and failed) attack to break Ulysses Grant’s army on the ridge.

As a deep carpet of leaves and twigs crunch and snap beneath my hiking boots, I happen upon an eye-opening (and sobering) marker: “Burial place. 14th Wisconsin Infantry,” it reads. “Bodies removed to Nat’l Cemetery.” Such markers frequently spring surprises on walks in the Shiloh woods.

A few yards away, I inspect the bottom of a massive, uprooted tree. Surely a Gardner or sliver of artillery shell burrowed itself among the mosaic of pebbles and other stones.

Later, I enter the ravine from the Tennessee River side, scurrying down a steep embankment and into the muck of Dill Branch. During the battle, two Union gunboats anchored in the river — the wooden USS Lexington and USS Tyler — emptied their massive guns into the ravine. Combined with Grant’s cannons on the ridge defending Pittsburg Landing, my God what noise they must have caused.

“Terrorizing” for the Confederates, a ranger later told me. But apparently the fire did little else to the Rebels. 

“Every two minutes, the enemy threw two shells from his gunboats,” Confederate Brigadier General Patrick Cleburne wrote, “some of which burst close around my men, banishing sleep from the eyes of a few, but falling chiefly among their own wounded, who were strewn thickly between the camp and the river…”

"Sounded terribly and looked ugly and hurt but few," Confederate Colonel John D. Martin wrote of the fire from the gunboats. 

Ulysses Grant's artillery protected Pittsburg Landing during the Battle of Shiloh.

Dill Branch Ravine on the Shiloh battlefield

Using cannons like these, Union gunboats in the Tennessee River shelled the ravine.

Surely several of the 32-pound shells from the gunboats remain buried in the ravine, perhaps still prepared to unleash their deadly contents on anyone who confronts them.

A gift from nature.

Deep in the ravine, as sunlight squeezes between the trees, I marvel at its steep walls. While climbing a hill on the return to my launch point, my heart races to well over 100 beats a minute. Under fire and carrying equipment, soldiers attacked here? What bravery.

In the ravine and above it on the ridge, I discover gifts from nature. A spectacular, red leaf among drab surroundings. Brilliant, green moss on a large, gray rock. A decaying, rusty brown stump. A single, cackling bird and a bouncy squirrel.

Maybe I should disappear into Dill Branch Ravine more often.

---

SOURCES

 — War of the Rebellion: Serial 010, Page 582, Kentucky, Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, Northern Alabama and southwestern Virginia, Chapter XXII

 — Ibid, Page 622. 

Tales from the road: 'Andrew Johnson is the old traitor'

The house in Greenville, Tennessee, where Andrew Johnson lived before and after his presidency.

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On Tuesday, I visited Greeneville, Tennessee for a morning of almost 100 percent Andrew Johnson immersion — touring the 17th president’s homes, inspecting his tailor’s shop, paying respects at his grave on Signal Hill and even “voting” in his impeachment trial at the small but interesting visitors center.

A painting of Johnson -- saved
from destruction during the
Civil War -- hangs in the house.

At the front desk at the VC, I peppered the cheery National Park Service ranger with questions about Johnson and whether it’s allowed to launch my 250-gram mini-drone at the nearby national cemetery where the president rests. (No, but that was swell.)

“Would you like to visit Johnson’s house?” she asked. The ticket for entry was well within my ballpark — free — so I got mine for the 11 a.m. tour and strolled around a corner.

At Johnson’s house — the one where he lived before and after his presidency — I met two Englishmen from London on an epic two-week Revolutionary War/Civil War sojourn. I’d have offered to show them around the country, but Mrs. B required my return to Nashville by Wednesday.

During the tour, the excellent NPS ranger dished on slave-holding Johnson’s complicated life and legacy. Sidenote: He lived and worked in a downstairs bedroom/office, separately from his wife, Eliza.

My ears perked up when the ranger told our small group about Rebel soldiers evicting Eliza and the rest of the family from the house in 1861 while Andrew was elsewhere. During the war, Confederates trashed the place. Some even left graffiti on the wall of a second-floor bedroom.

“Andrew Johnson the old traitor,” one of them wrote. (The graffiti is protected by Plexiglas.)

Anywho, the tour was superb. So was my aptly named “Awesome Chicken” sandwich at the Tannery Downtown on East Depot Street.

Greeneville, I shall return.

Graffiti left in the Johnson house by Confederate soldiers.

At the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site visitors center, you can cast your vote
for -- or against -- President Johnson's impeachment, just as lawmakers did in 1868.